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How-To Geek

History trivia shouldn’t be limited to just treaty dates and wars ending, we’re marking off major milestones in geek history—one week at at time. This week in history we’ve got Santa on the Cold War radar, baby HTTP going for a spin, and Babbage’s birth to help usher in the age of computers.

NORAD Tracks Santa for the First Time

In 1955 a Sears store in Colorado Springs, CO placed an advertisement with a hotline phone number that purported to be a direct line to Santa’s workshop. A typo in the phone number actually directed all the curious children to Colorado Spring’s Continental Air Defense Command (the precursor to NORAD). When the line started ringing off the hook the officer on duty, Colonel Shoup, directed his men to give all the children a current location for Santa Claus—it’s heart warming to know that in the depths of the Cold War there was still time to humor some excited children on Christmas Eve. The tradition continues to this day with a volunteer staff manning phones banks, answering emails, and tending a web site devoted to tracking Santa.

The First Web Server Communicates Over the Greater Internet

Although the first public web site wasn’t live until 1991, on December 25th, 1990 Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau tested HTTP over the internet. This marked the first time a web site had been accessed remotely outside of their lab and was the beginning of an information revolution the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the advent of the printing press. You can read more about the history of the Web here.

Charles Babbage Is Born

Charles Baggage was an English philosopher, mathematician, inventor, and most notably, a visionary who created the idea of a programmable computer. He built numerous computation machines but his masterpiece wasn’t completed until 1991, long after his death—although, interestingly enough, when built to the specs and tolerances which would be feasible in the 19th century it worked flawlessly. His giant mechanical computation monstrosities might be two nearly two centuries removed from the tiny microprocessors we carry around in our pockets but they laid the groundwork for modern computing. Read more about his life here.

Have an interesting bit of geek history trivia to share? Shoot us an email at tips@howtogeek.com with “history” in the subject line and we’ll check your tip out and add it to our list of trivia.

Jason Fitzpatrick is a warranty-voiding DIYer who spends his days cracking opening cases and wrestling with code so you don't have to. If it can be modded, optimized, repurposed, or torn apart for fun he's interested (and probably already at the workbench taking it apart). You can follow him on Twitter if you'd like.